Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
That is not the30 Rockreunions problem.
Its occasional dives into manic, unhinged surrealism feel unnervingly convincing.
As a show within a show that was explicitly a part of NBC,30 Rockhas always played this game.
Its title is an ad for NBC.
Kenneths page uniform is an ad for NBC.
About 30 percent of Jack Donaghys lines in any given episode could be reasonably construed as ads for NBC.
About 70 percent of Kenneths lines also count.
It was a teetering, sometimes uneasy balance, and in many areas the show often tipped too far.
Like several other sitcoms, a few30 Rockepisodeshave recently been pulled from streamingservices because they feature characters in blackface.
Without a stronger internal compass on race and politics,30 Rocks sly wisecracks sometimes backfired.
Theres no way to twist that line back around so it means the opposite.
Its unmistakably a joke at NBCs expense.
This is exactly what the30 Rockreunion was not.
Kenneth seems primed to fail at this upfront presentation.
Liz & Co. are trying to bring backTGS, an effort that just cannot succeed.
Jennas called upon to improvise an NBC theme song.
The dominoes are set to fall.
Even act-outs at the end of each segment are transitions to goofily appropriate NBC ads.
(Maybe Ill watch the news, Liz says, before dreamily listing her favorite NBC/MSNBC anchors.
Cue: an ad for NBCUniversal news programming.)
In the original run of the show, the ads were usually jokes.
In the reunion, most of the jokes are ads.
Thank God advertisers are some of the smartest and most physically attractive people the world has ever seen!
Jack says, near the beginning of the episode.
